50 Things and 1 Sketch/Template

There is so much energy in the air with the start of the New Year!  Can you feel it?  All the resolutions that people commit to, the goals they set, the new chapters they open in their lives, this all gives off a tremendous amount of electricity. Grab hold of it and let it re-charge your batteries!

In the crafting community people have just finished up their December Daily albums, are revisiting their Project 365/Project 52 attempts and commitments from last year. They are finalizing their P365/52 or OLW (One Little Word) or Project Life plans for 2012.  I commend those of you that were able to stick with it!  I didn't even start! I did however get this really cool app for my brand new iPhone. It's called Photo365. I've been keeping up with snapping a photo a day using my phone and capturing it on that app.  Someday I'll get around to turning that into a project I can hold in my hand and share with others.

All this energy was swirling around me as the New Year started. It made me look back over my life. I wanted to capture things about me.  Just stuff.  Little things.  Items that might change over time, some things that might remain the same. But just a bunch of those everyday kind of things that you don't really think about, mixed with a few big things.  And I wanted to get it captured NOW!  That is what inspired me to create this page.

I listed things that I have accomplished as well as things that I enjoy or are important to me.  I threw in some of my favorites like foods, music, books. I noted some special traditions that I cherish, places that I have visited or dream of visiting. I made sure to list some of the most fond memories that I have.  My life has been so abundantly blessed that I could easily have done many more of these pages.  But I limited myself to 50 items and one page just so I would get this done!

I created it digitally. Which is really fantastic, because I can easily re-use the base as a template to create the next page. That should help speed things along!  And since I created the template, I'm going to share it with you too!

You can simply right click on the image above and save it to use as a sketch for creating your own paper scrapbook page.  Or for the digi-scrappers, You can click HERE to download the layered .psd file as well as the sketch.

Happy New Year!

Designer Showcase: Occupation

Can you believe that this coming weekend is Labor Day here in the states?  Me either!  To help celebrate, our Designer Showcase this week has the theme of "Occupation".  You are going to really enjoy the artists interpretations this week.  So sit back and get ready for some inspiration.

My husband is an Emergency Management Director and Fire Marshal.  He loves his job! With the recent events of Hurricane Irene, he has been a very busy guy!  In his "free" time, he is also a volunteer Fire Chief.  He enjoys doing this and giving back to the community.  I created this layout to show how very proud I am of what he does. I used gradients and blending to create the background with photos from over the years.

Cindy has shared this really cute layout about her career. She went from being a teacher to being a stay-at-home-mom.  I think that is the most awesome promotion!  I really like the way her design with the strip of striped paper going across the page, leads your eye from the class photo and brings your attention to the beautiful photo of her with her son.

This layout from Heather makes me chuckle!  First off, isn't it just so cute in it's design?  Heather is always great at taking linear designs to a new level. She combines the square and rectangular pieces of paper with a few circles, stars and elements to add interest and dimension.  The title and her journaling has me laughing!  "The Chicken Tamer"!!  I can just see her son running about chasing those chickens!

As we were preparing for this theme it really got me to thinking about some of the things in life that we may neglect in our scrapping. The everyday things that we take for granted. It's important to record them too.  Don't forget to take some time and make up a page about what occupies your time.  It may be your career, or a hobby, or volunteer work, it could be about homeschooling or being a part of the Parent-Teacher group, reading books to your children, or even scrapping! Anything that you or a loved one spends time doing deserves to be recorded and remembered.  Even if it is chasing chickens!  Go ahead and take the time to make up a page about it. You won't regret it!

We love to see what you have made. And we love to share them, If you've been inspired by this, email your projects to me and I will include them in an upcoming Reader's Pages post. Email to me at scrappycath(at)gmail(dot)com and put "Occupation" as the subject.